NRA’s LaPierre Says Universal Background Check Won’t Work

Universal background checks on people
buying guns wouldn’t be effective, Wayne LaPierre, chief
executive officer of the National Rifle Association, said during
an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“It’s a fraud to call it universal,” LaPierre said in the
interview broadcast yesterday. “It’s never going to be
universal. The criminals aren’t going to comply with it.”

Congress is debating how to reduce gun violence after a
Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut, left 20 children and six school employees dead.
President Barack Obama said he backs a ban on sales of assault
weapons, a proposal that faces opposition in Congress even as a
majority of the public supports it.

LaPierre and Republicans including Senator John Cornyn of
Texas have said current laws aren’t properly enforced. Teaching
responsible gun ownership, arming security guards in schools and
prosecuting criminals can curb violence, LaPierre has said.

LaPierre said on Fox that “if you limit the American
public’s access to semi-automatic technology, you limit their
ability to survive.”

“We need to increase that,” said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
“I’m still a supporter of the Second Amendment, but you can do
things like that.”

Background Checks

Mark Kelly, an astronaut and husband of former U.S.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who
survived a gunshot to the head in 2011, said during the Fox show
that broadening background checks would keep guns out of the
hands of the mentally ill, criminals and terrorists.

“Common sense tells me that if it is much more difficult
for criminals and the mentally ill” to obtain weapons, then
“it will save lives,” said Kelly.

Kelly, Reid and Obama all touted their own familiarity with
guns this weekend. The White House released a photo of Obama
skeet-shooting at Camp David last August.

Reid said that “I don’t hunt anymore, but I did. I’ve got
lots of guns.”

“My dad killed himself, shot himself with a gun,” Reid
said on ABC. “So I know a lot about guns.”

Kelly, a former Navy captain, said, “I spent 25 years in
the military and I know the value of having an assault weapon.
It’s to kill a lot of people very quickly.”

Gun Shows

Kelly said that 1.7 million people have been prevented from
buying weapons due to background checks since 1999. Some have
been able to get around the rejection by buying weapons at gun
shows or from private sellers.

“We have to make sure they don’t have a second way of
getting a gun,” Kelly said.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, introduced
a bill on Jan. 24 to ban certain assault weapons and limit high-
capacity magazines to 10 rounds. It would exempt all assault
weapons legally possessed prior to passage of the law and
exclude more than 2,200 hunting and sporting rifles. A 1994
assault-weapons ban, signed by then-President Bill Clinton,
expired in 2004.

Jared Lee Loughner fired 31 bullets in 15 seconds in the
Tucson, Arizona, shooting two years ago that injured Giffords
and killed six other people. He was tackled while reloading.
Kelly said limiting the magazines to 10 rounds would have
stopped Loughner sooner.

In 2011, federal weapons prosecutions per capita were down
35 percent from their peak during the previous administration,
LaPierre said during a Jan. 30 congressional hearing where
Giffords told Congress “you must act” to curb gun violence.